WORKSHOPS IN THE BAY AREA: STORIES OF THE NIGHT 8/29 & 8/30

Our nightly dreams are the repository of our deepest memories and feelings. They call to us from the innermost center of our being. They touch us in our tenderest places with the depth of our longing, our joys and our sorrows. They enchant us with euphoria, they arouse our passions, they frighten us, they inspire us and they fill us with wonder. Yet, the dreams of the night are not easy to decipher. When we reenter the dream landscape through collage and creative writing techniques, we are meeting Psyche in her own language of metaphor and symbol. Guided dream journal techniques will unravel the riddles of the night and give voice to the yearnings, anguish and ecstasies of the paradoxical realm of the dreaming mind.

8/29 San Francisco Advance Reservations: Peggy Adeboi  (415) 337-6430  peggy@adeboi.com

8/30 Berkeley: Advance Reservations: Naomi Epel  (415) 377-1176 naomi@observationdeck.com

MASTER OF RIDDLES: A 10 MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

It isn’t always necessary to analyze or interpret this strange upside down, inside out dream world. Simply notice that you are in a lopsided world that doesn’t obey logical rules. Become curious.

Make a list of questions without any need to find answers. Take ten minutes to simply puzzle, ponder, contemplate, reflect, meditate, marvel, ruminate, speculate and wonder about the peculiar events, people that populate your dreamscape.

• Get inside your dream and look around.
• Observe the dream images from as many perspectives as you can.
• Ask questions of your dream images.
• Allow your dream images to ask you questions.

To have a question is at the core of being an artist. -Deena Metzger

MASTER OF RIDDLES: WORKSHOP 8/24/10

Dreams come to us as riddles filled with enigmatic imagery, odd encounters, eccentric characters, obscure references and paradoxical imagery. They haunt us with reverberations of the unknown and the unfathomable.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. – Rainer Maria Rilke

— Rainer Maria Rilke

THE POETICS OF PARADOX: A 10 MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Dreams are intricate puzzles. We often awaken bewildered and confused by our nocturnal meanderings in a bizarre world of entanglements, complications and reversals. We find ourselves in situations which are the direct opposite of what we expect. Our best intentions are undermined. Our morality is mocked. Our notions of rational law and order are turned inside out.

In many dreams, we assume a role as one of the characters through which we view the dream story unfolding. This personification is often referred to as the “Dream Ego.” Step outside of this point of view.

Allow two opposing characters to have their own voices. In a stream of consciousness writing technique, let each one speak for five minutes with certainty about what it knows for sure. Perhaps one character says the opposite of what the other character knows to be true. Allow the characters to contradict one another.

A paradox is a seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true. This is the essence of the genius of our dreams.  Can you allow yourself to accept different versions of “The Truth?”

WORKSHOP: THE POETICS OF PARADOX 8/17/10

Are we traveling this road to the end?

Yes.

But you said the road has no end.

That’s true

How can it be true?

From a certain point of view, the universe seems to be composed of paradoxes. But everything resolves. That is the function of contradiction.

I don’t understand.

When you see everything from every imaginable point of view, you might begin to understand.

Ben Okri, The Famished Road

HOW DO I PREPARE FOR JOINING A DREAMGROUP?

Hello Victoria;

Your name was given to me by a friend while we were talking about some difficult dreams I’d been having. I am also an artist but feel rather that I’m either banging my head into a wall or actually regressing in the quality of my work. My question at this point is how would I prepare if I wish to pursue using dreams to help me at this “stuck’ point in my life and work. I’ve not been keeping a journal of my dreams as I know is so commonly recommended, since I’m not very organized in regards to keeping a journal. Perhaps it’s also because of the quality of some of the dreams/nightmares I’ve had. Some feel almost as if they are someone else’s dreams since I don’t know the location or players and although I would want to learn from them, at the same time, I don’t wish to encourage anything negative (which is usually the feeling I am left with).

KS

Dear KS,

Your query is poignant. I have often worked with dreamers who feel like you – Stuck and unable to get out of a waking direction that seems to be underscored by “negative” dreams.

Nightmares confuse us. Just when we expect a lovely, pretty inspirational dream to help us climb out of our downward spiral, we feel haunted  by scary, unsettling dramas.

Welcome to the World of Paradox!

Under the influence of children’s literature and Hollywood, we expect our dreams to be fluffy little things with pink horses and marshmallow clouds.

As artists, we expect direct inspiration from an inner voice that gives clear directions for what to paint or write.

Although many astonishing tales of great inventions and profound works of art abound, let me assure you that most of the time dream messages are disguised in metaphor and wordplay.

The world of dreams is a labyrinth with a string. In creative DreamWork, we grow to trust that this string will lead us out from the great “Unknown”

By bringing the dream onto our writing desks and into our journals, we acknowledge that dreams take time to unravel. We accept the dedication to time in the labyrinth, exploring it hallways, knowing that a monster lives within. We take the hero’s journey, because we must. The alternative is to remain lost.

Before attending a dream workshop or beginning to work with a DreamGroup, I encourage you to become an adventurer of the mind. Open a few dream doors. Let in a few unsettling images. Know that this is where the juice is. Write about the images, sketch them, turn them around in your mind’s eye.

This doesn’t mean that you have to become an obsessive recorder and arrive at your first dream circle with a volume of one hundred dreams captured in one month! If you have ever captured one dream, you can begin. Some people only work with one dream throughout their lifetime. Others work with fragments. Still others work with one dream a week.

In my blog, I offer thoughts about the mysterious world of dreams plus ten minute dream journal exercises. Each exercise can be used with one dream or different ones. Read about several of the workshop themes and try a few of the exercises. Begin to flex your dream muscles.

Once you have become acquainted with a dream tending practice in which you have welcomed a relationship with your journal, your meditations, your dance or your artwork; you will know when you are ready to bring your dreams into a DreamGroup environment.

I hope this response holds some inspiration for you to jump into that unknown territory! Go for it!

Victoria

VICTORIA DREAMS

Dream          August 4, 2010

HOW TO FIX THE LINK

I am walking on a mountain path beside Grandmother.

The path curves around the side of a gentle mountain slope.

I want to attach myself to Grandmother,

but I’ve used a big hyperlink!

Every time I click it near Grandmother

It pops up in a huge window between us.

I somehow know that I know how to fix the link -

to make the image much smaller and streamlined.

But I don’t remember how.

POWER: A 10 MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Choose two dream images that hold power.

An dominating or aggressive image:

THE HYPERLINKS

How is this force is dominating and controlling my life?

The HYPERLINKS are dominating and aggressive.

They interrupt my attempts to attach myself to Grandmother.

When I get close to her,

these inflated attention grabbing, interfering, noisy distractions pop up between us.

She will only become annoyed.

She will never attach herself to me with these hyperlinks getting in the way.

An image that  has an inner power or spiritual strength.

THE GENTLE MOUNTAIN PATHWAY

How does this power fill me with the potent vital force of  inner strength?

THE GENTLE  PATHWAY on the MOUNTAIN side has an inner power and a spiritual strength.

It shows the way from the past to the future that continues from my ancestors through me.

There is nothing to be said or shown or done.

I can trust the mountain path to take me where I am going.

I am already here, walking side by side with Grandmother.

Perhaps if I don’t try to attach myself to her,

she will come to me of her own accord.

She doesn’t need to know who I am,

I need to know who she is.

POWER: A 10 MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Choose two dream images that hold power. These images can be characters, animals, natural settings, cataclysmic events or weather conditions.

YOUR MISSION SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT…

1. Choose one dream image that is dominating or aggressive. Write for five minutes about how this force may be dominating or controlling your life.
2. Choose another image that  has an inner power or spiritual strength. Write for five minutes about how this power fills you with the potent vital force of  inner strength.

WORKSHOP:DREAM POWER 8/10/10

Creative Dreamwork is not about directing dream images to our will. It is about opening and descending into the roots of our own psyche to find our Power. We use this found power to expose and follow the energy released by “real”izing our dreams through writing, art, dance, and theater. When we renter a dream of Power, we honor what it feels like to step outside of the ordinary realm of self doubt or vulnerability where we can experience a sense of control and well being by manifesting a creative response to the dream.

PSIBER DREAMING CONFERENCE 2010

9th Annual PsiberDreaming Conference

“We are  such stuff as dreams are made on...”
Prospero in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest

September 26 – October 10, 2010

Join Host Jean Campbell and the Psibercore Team for two weeks of cutting-edge presentations, workshops, and discussion with some of the top experts in the field of dreams. This year’s conference will focus on the mystery of how dreams are created.

Conference Rates:

General Public $45 (USD)
IASD Member $40
Student With Valid ID $30

JOIN IASD as a first time member between July 15 and September 15 to RECEIVE A FREE PASS TO PSIBERDREAMING 2010! Click Here to Become A Member

Membership in IASD includes discounted rates for conferences and other events, subscription to the IASD magazine Dream News,subscription to the IASD scholarly journal Dreaming, and monthly updates through our e-newsletter Dream News.

CARTOGRAPHER: A 10 MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

MAPPING THE DREAMSCAPE

Traversing the hemispheres of the night mind can be a daunting journey if we have no way to find our bearings. We awaken feeling lost and disoriented with no way to ground our experience in this sea of shifting tides.

A visual, symbolic depiction can speak more than words when attempting to define the strange upside down, inside out world of dreams.

By arranging coordinates to describe the dream narrative, we can navigate through the geography of time, memory and mystery.

Draw a map of your dream

• Diagram the twists and turns in the landscape as well as in the plot of your dream.
• Mark patterns of movement or migrations.
• Indicate the distances between places or events.
• Notice the placement of crossroads.
• Make notations about the points of interest along the way.
• Chart the boundaries, the short cuts, the detours, the alternate routes.
• Mark the edges, the obstacles, the dead ends.
• Create turnarounds and escape routes.
• Make connections. Create bridges.

WORKSHOP: DREAM CARTOGRAPHER: AUGUST 3

A dream is a personal atlas of where we are in our lives, where we have come from and where we are going. The dream takes us on a voyage beneath the surface of what is known and elevates us to peaks of what is possible. The territory of a dream can be a physical space, an internal realm or an emotional field.